China bound: Hedda Hammer

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Citation Roberts, Claire. 2013. China bound: Hedda Hammer. Harvard Library Bulletin 23 (3), Fall 2012: 50-51.

Citable link https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37363254

Terms of Use This article was downloaded from ’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA China Bound: Hedda Hammer

Claire Roberts

Advertisement in Der Photograph 43 (May 2, 1933), n.p. FA16.275.

s a research fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2009–2010), I worked on two intersecting projects: a history of A photography in China and a detailed examination of the photographic archive of Hedda Hammer Morrison (1908–1991) in the Harvard-Yenching Library. Each project was large enough to consume an entire year, but the opportunity of having access to the rich library and photographic collections at Harvard was too good to limit myself to either one. In the case of the Morrison project, the work undertaken at Harvard would build on research that I had conducted in , where Morrison resided for the last two decades of her life. My objective was to study the large archive of photographs that

50 Te Fine Arts Library at 50 Morrison had taken in between 1933 and 1946, as well as related material that she had bequeathed to the university library. I also hoped to confrm some important biographical details. Hedda Morrison’s now classic book A Photographer in Old Peking (1985) begins, “I knew very little about China when the opportunity arose for me to go there in 1933. Te opportunity was in the form of an advertisement in a German photographic journal for a qualifed woman photographer to manage Hartungs Photo Studio in Peking. Te advertisement was almost tailor-made for me since it specifed a Swabian—natives of Swabia are reputed to be hard workers—able to speak English and French . . . I was anxious to work overseas, as I had no sympathy for the of the time, and the idea of working in far-away Peking appealed greatly to me.”12 Te passport belonging to Marie Hedwig Hammer, now in the collection of the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, was issued in , Germany, on August 20, 1932. It contains a visa for travel to Yugoslavia, issued on July 10, 1933, and then cancelled, and a visa for China. On August 10, 1933, six days afer she received a visa to China, the young Hedda traveled by ship from Trieste to Shanghai and then by train to Beijing. Tese dates established a time frame to examine “German photographic journals” in the hope of fnding the advertisement that was to change the course of her life. Amanda Bowen, Head of Collections, and Joanne Bloom, Photographic Resources Librarian in the Fine Arts Library, prepared an impressive list of German photographic magazines covering the period 1932–1933: Deutscher Kamera Almanach; Das Deutsche Lichtbild; Photo Woche; Agfa Photoblätter; Das Atelier des Photographen; Photographische Korrespondenz; Die Photographische Industrie; and Photographische Rundschau..13 Sharon Wang, a graduate student research partner, worked with me to look through the eight titles but hours of careful examination uncovered nothing. With the help of German-born doctoral candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Natalie Köhle, who, like Hedda Hammer, was born in Stuttgart, the advertisement was eventually found in the magazine Der Photograph (May 2, 1933).14 Te advertisement, headed “China” in large bold capital letters, stood out prominently on the page. Te job description was in fact tailor-made for Hammer and it must have been with some confdence that she sent of her application and a portfolio of photographs, anticipating the day that she would be China bound.

12 Hedda Morrison, Introduction, in A Photographer in Old Peking (Oxford University Press, , 1985), 1. 13 I am grateful to Amanda Bowen and Joanne Bloom for their generous assistance. 14 Afer Natalie Köhle found the advertisement, she observed that Der Photograph was in fact the logical place to fnd it as the head of the photography school where Hedda Hammer had studied was the editor.

Claire Roberts 51 Contributors

James S. Ackerman is Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus, Harvard University.

Glaire D. Anderson is Associate Professor of Art History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Susan Anderson is Curatorial Research Associate for Dutch and Flemish Drawings, Harvard Art Museums.

Persis Berlekamp, PhD 2003, is Associate Professor of Art History, University of Chicago.

Francesca Bewer is Research Curator in the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums.

Kathryn Brush is Professor of Art History, Department of Visual Arts, University of Western Ontario, Canada.

Ellen P. Conant is an independent scholar.

Harry Cooper, PhD 1997, is Curator of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art.

James Cuno, PhD 1985, is President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Walter B. Denny, PhD 1971, is Professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Emine Fetvaci, PhD 2005, is Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Boston University.

Shirin Fozi, PhD 2010, is Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh.

Wolfgang Freitag was Librarian of the Fine Arts Library from 1962 to 1989.

Jeffrey L. Horrell was Librarian of the Fine Arts Library from 1992 to 1998 and currently is Dean of Libraries at Dartmouth College.

Harvard Library Bulletin 65 Aden Kumler, PhD 2007, is Assistant Professor, Department Art History, University of Chicago.

Melissa Beck Lemke is Image Specialist for Italian Art, Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art.

Megan R. Luke, PhD 2009, is Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Southern California.

Katharine Martinez was the Librarian of the Fine Arts Library from 1998 to 2010 and currently is Director of the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona.

Christine Mehring, PhD 2001, is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, University of Chicago.

John E. Moore, PhD 1992, is Professor of Art, Smith College.

Alexander Nagel, PhD 1993, is Professor of Fine Arts, New York University.

Peter Nisbet is Chief Curator at the Ackland Art Museum, Te University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Lisa Pon, PhD 1999, is Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Southern Methodist University.

Scott Redford, PhD 1989, is Professor in the Department of Archaeology and History of Art, Koç University, Istanbul.

Melissa Renn is Senior Curatorial Research Associate, Harvard Art Museums.

Claire Roberts is Senior Lecturer in Art History, University of Adelaide.

William W. Robinson, PhD 1996, is Maida and George Abrams Curator of Drawings, Harvard Art Museums.

Eric M. Rosenberg, PhD 1992, is Associate Professor of Art History, Tufs University.

John M. Rosenfield, PhD 1959, is Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of East Asian Art Emeritus, Harvard University.

Hao Sheng is Wu Tung Curator of Chinese Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Seymour Slive is Gleason Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus, Harvard University.

66 Te Fine Arts Library at 50 Miriam Stewart is Curator of the Collection, Division of European and